Excavation teeth are provided on the digging edge of various pieces of digging equipment such as the buckets of front end loaders. Each excavation tooth is formed of a number of parts, commonly a point, an adapter and a lock. The adapter is typically fitted to the excavation equipment and the point fits over the adapter and is retained in place by the lock. In some instances one or more intermediate parts may be also included between the point and the adapter. For ease of description it is to be understood that, unless the context requires otherwise, the term “adapter” used in this specification includes both the adapter arranged to be fitted to the excavation equipment or, if one or more intermediate parts are provided, to that intermediate part(s) or to the combination of the adapter and the intermediate part(s).
The reason that the excavation tooth is formed of a number of parts is to avoid having to discard the entire tooth when only parts of the tooth, in particular the ground engaging part of the tooth (i.e. the point) is worn or broken.
Various types of locks, points and adapters are known. However, it is always desirable to design new excavation tooth assemblies and parts thereof.